


Everything I Ever Thought I Knew

by TMoony



Series: Tangled in Frozen Week Challenge [4]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Confessions, Post-Frozen (2013), Sister-Sister Relationship, Tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23683963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TMoony/pseuds/TMoony
Summary: My content for Day 4 of the "Tangled in Frozen Week Challenge." The One-Shot is based on the song "Everything I Ever Thought I Knew." Summary: Elsa and Anna have an argument that ends with broken hearts and words that never should have left lips. After Anna runs away and cries, Elsa needs to find the answer to one important question she never dared to ask herself before.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney)
Series: Tangled in Frozen Week Challenge [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701244
Kudos: 9





	Everything I Ever Thought I Knew

**Author's Note:**

> If there is something I love to write more than fighting scenes, it is drama.

# Everything I Ever Thought I Knew

"We made a promise not to shut each other out again!" Her voice was filled with a heat that would have melted the ice in the room. If there was any, of course. Elsa was sure it would be just a matter of time until they stood in a winter wonderland, though.

"You promised, Elsa!" The girl- no, the woman in front of her threw her heat at Elsa again, but the blonde remained silent. Looking down at her feet, and avoiding her sister's gaze, Elsa had no idea what to do now. Anna's eyes were glowing with something warmer and more dangerous than fire and were already beyond the exploding fieriness of lava from a Volcano. Anna was exploding in front of her, turning the surrounding air in a tornado. No one could see it but Elsa felt it. She felt the shifting air that pushed against her angrily. The tension was dancing between them like the leaves in the wind on an autumn day.

"You looked me in the eyes and promised to tell me everything!" Elsa remembered it. She would never forget the shining oceans in her sister's blue eyes while she had lied to her. Back then, she had no clue she was lying, though, but she knew it now. She had lied. And this lie, lodged itself deep down in her mind and never letting go of her again, was the very reason why she wasn't able to look in her sister's eyes now. The lie stood between them and it would stay there even longer.

Elsa missed her sister's eyes already.

"Why didn't you tell me?" There was her heat again, but no calming blue of oceans to soothe it. The storming wind in the room pushed harder against Elsa while Anna said, "Tell me what's going on!" No hair strains on her head moved, though. The storm raged on, but nothing moved between them. "I just want to help you, please." The words coming out of Anna's mouth crumpled. Her voice was breaking and her body was trembling. Anger turned into sadness. Elsa made her sister cry and the first snowflake fell down, pushing away the autumn wind completely. "Please, let me in."

"How?" Elsa spoke for the first time in, like, eons. It was her first acoustic reaction since Anna had stormed into her study. Anna's eyebrows moved up and formed an arch bridge on her forehead, and Elsa went on, "How do you want to help? What can you do?"

"I, um. I can…" Elsa didn't let Anna finish.

"I didn't tell you about them because I knew you couldn't do anything to fix it. It is my problem. It is mine alone." Elsa's voice, first shaking and wavering, was no longer her voice. Now the queen spoke. Firm. Steady. Strong. And so, so very cold.

"You don't have to deal with it on your own. I'm here for you!" A tiny breeze came from Anna, but it had no chance against the howling blizzard coming from Elsa. "Just let me in, please!"

"What would you have done, if I had told you about those men, huh?" Elsa fired back, remembering the visibly furious faces of the men when the guards had thrown them in the dungeons after their assassination on the queen had failed. "Threw them in the dungeon again? Slapping them with your own hands? Or sign their execution?"

"I don't care about them, Elsa, I care about you!" Anna said, tears were no longer running down her cheeks, but her oceans were still as watery as before. "I would have calmed you down. Hug you, speak nice words to you. Help you heal your wounds. Everything to make you feel better after some maniacs had tried to kill you!"

"I was not harmed, Anna."

"I don't talk about the wounds on the outside, Elsa." No, of course not. Their knives hadn't touched her skin, but they had stabbed her many times in the heart. And now Elsa was stabbing Anna with words she had never said out loud because she had thought words were just as painful as the knives. Now, painfully, she realized the silence was sharper. They were both bleeding now and none of them had a healing potion. Not for themselves or for the other. Blizzard and autumn breeze, both now howled in their chests in pain silently.

The raging emotions inside Elsa dizzied her mind and made her lose control for one second. Not on her powers, though.

"I am fine, Anna. I don't need you." Words as cold as ice shot out from her mouth and Elsa felt the crushing clash when they hit her sister's ears. She knew these words were lies. She knew she shouldn't have said it. She knew… she knew so much but yet was so stupid. So, so stupid. And when Elsa saw how her sister's oceans broke again and flooded her entire freckled face, Elsa knew she deserved all the heat in her sister's voice. Anna had the right to burn Elsa with her voice and let the wind push her sister out of her life.

"But I'm not okay…" whimpered Anna and for a moment, Elsa feared her next words that would be "and I don't need you, too." But they never came. Instead, Anna turned away from the invisible door between them that Elsa had shut in her face once more and burst out of the real door behind her.

Elsa only saw her sister's back, and it made one single thought clear in her mind: There would be no last chance to promise she would never mess it up again. While watching her sister's back as she walked away, Elsa felt a devastating pain taking over. Elsa kept watching, taking all the pain in, and felt the missing presence of Anna resonating in her head like an echo.

The door closed and Anna was gone.

Elsa's walls crumbled down like a house of cards that got hit by the breeze. Elsa wished there would be any breeze left to push her away to somewhere else. She wished for some clouds above her head to rain so no one would see her tears. But her world was empty at the very moment the door in front of her had been closed. Now she knew how it felt and it let her legs give up. When she hit the ground like a crashing comet, her world didn't stop spinning, it just turned around and around while getting shredded under her own weigh.

Elsa had thought she knew already how the loneliness felt like, but now she really knew it and her world kept turning and turning around, but it left her behind. She couldn't move, couldn't follow the world. She tried to breathe and realized she was paralyzed. Not her body, but her mind. Her world kept turning but her mind was still with Anna.

Hours went by, even days. The castle became a graveyard of emotions for Elsa. From Gerda, she heard Anna had been crying in her room every night whenever Elsa was in her own room. From Kai, she heard Anna had been crying during each dinner that she avoided joining in. And from Kristoff, she had heard Anna had been crying whenever Elsa wasn't there.

Elsa hadn't seen Anna since she had run through the door.

After a week, Elsa knew she couldn't go on like this any longer. Not only did she miss her sweet little sister, but she also felt the heavy layer of emotions the sisters left behind in the entire castle and everyone found themselves within, getting infected by it and spread it even further. Her sister suffered, their staff suffered, Kristoff suffered, her kingdom suffered. It was her fault and she had to fix it.

If she only knew how.

She had spent hours and hours walking back and forth in her room, thinking and searching. It was only months after her coronation after the Great Thaw and her thought only belonged to Anna, the person she thought she knew but this was a lie. Lies. Lies. Lies. Elsa remembered her little sister; five-year-old Anna. Playing in the courtyard every day, waking her up every night, eating all sweets from her all the time. Anna who cried until her eyes were all red now wasn't five years old anymore. She had spent 13 years alone without Elsa. This Anna was a different Anna. The Anna she knew was no longer, she was lost somewhere during 13 years of loneliness (caused by Elsa.)

Her little sister, the person she loved the most, became a total stranger behind the closed door. So unfamiliar that Elsa even started to doubt her sister's love to her. How was she supposed to make up for everything if she didn't even know the person she had to apologize to? If she really wanted to give a real apology, she needed to know Anna first.

She knew her own world was lost beyond any repair but all she could muster was a desperate try to save Anna's world, and it was the last thing that kept her heart beating. One last desperate try. After this, she could fade into white dust, she didn't care, as long as Anna was whole again.

Elsa left her room with a plan already forming in her mind. When she found two members of the staff cleaning the hallway, she knew it was her chance. Outside her room, they had been spending all those years with her sister in the castle. They should know her.

"Kai, Gerda!" Only after their names left her lips, she realized she had used her queen voice, therefore, it was no wonder they both turned around, alarmed. With a calmer voice that reminded her of her mother, she spoke again, "Kai, Gerda, I need to ask you both a question."

"Of course, Your Majesty, at your service," Kai said, bowing with Gerda in synch and waiting for Elsa to go on. Their eyes grew wide when Elsa said, "How would you describe Anna?"

"I am afraid I don't understand, Your Majesty."

"Just tell me what you think about my sister. I wish to hear your honest opinion, don't be afraid, I won't hold it against you." Both Kai and Gerda looked at each other, and Elsa felt they had a conversation in silence. After so many years of working and living together, people started to share such things. Would Anna and she have something similar if the gates never got closed?

Gerda was the first to search for Elsa's eyes again, coughing slightly before she said, "Princess Anna is one of the kindliest persons I have met. Seeing her grow up, I am sure every mother would be proud to have a daughter like her. That goes to both of you, Your Majesty."

"Thank you, Gerda," Elsa smiled, hoping for more while Kai began to say, "Her Highness is not like other princesses, though. She is more like you, my queen."

"S-she is?" Elsa had no idea if he meant it in a bad or good way. Bad for her or Anna?

"She is," Kai smiled. "The princess thinks her sister got all good traits and she thinks less of herself. But she is capable of so much, she just doesn't know it." Kai was still smiling at her, but Elsa didn't get why he said Anna was like her. Everything he said about Anna she would agree to. Anna was capable of so much more. She only had to believe more in herself. Anna was the good sister. Nothing like Elsa.

"Thank you," Elsa said nonetheless. They both bowed again and went on with their work. Elsa, on the other hand, went out to the stables. She knew very well who would be there at this time of the day. When she entered the stables, she already heard funny noises coming from a certain mountain man, his reindeer, and a snowman. Exactly the three people she was looking for. They helped her sister going to the North Mountain and even going back to Arendelle safe and sound. Well, except for the Ice in her heart (caused by Elsa herself.) If someone knew the new Anna, it would be these three.

Kristoff was making a haystack for Sven who drank out of a horse trough while Olaf told them a story of his latest adventure. Elsa called attention to herself with a little cough.

"Elsa!" said Kristoff, stopping with his doing immediately and smiling. "I didn't see you." Even when it was her fault that Anna was at the lowest point of her life, he never showed any reluctance toward her or scolded her about it. Maybe it was because she was the queen and his future sister-in-law.

"Can I ask you guys something?" Elsa said, smiling back.

"Oh, do you want me to repeat how I found out about the cook's affair?" Olaf said happily.

"Huh?"

"No, Olaf, she is not here to hear this," Kristoff said and Elsa saw his panic and fear of the thought to have to endure the whole tale again. She chuckled but remembered her plan.

"Thank you, Olaf, but maybe another time. I need your help with Anna," she admitted, looking down at her hands which were folded in front of her belly.

"About time," Kristoff said and nodded along with Sven. "Anna is just waiting for-" This time, Sven knocked Kristoff's arm with his antlers and gave a grunt. "I mean," Kristoff said again, "she is really sad. Soothe the waters between you will definitely help both of you."

"Yes, I need to say to her how sorry and wrong I was."

"So, how can I help you then?" Kristoff asked. "Do you want to throw a party for her?"

"No…" The sheer imagination of a crowd and only strangers laughing and eating around her while she was searching for Anna was pure horror. "Can you tell me what you think of her?"

"Um, what?"

"What do you think of her."

"I love her of course," said Kristoff dumbstruck.

"No, no, that's not what I mean," Elsa said right away, waving her hands in front of her. "I mean, um, imagine I don't know Anna, how would you describe her to a stranger?" He didn't need to imagine this. It was the truth. However, it didn't change the fact that is eyebrows went all the way up, his eyes got big and bigger. Before he could say something, though, Olaf giggled and jumped in front of Elsa.

"That's easy!" he exclaimed. "Anna is the bravest hero I ever met!" He started jumping up and down, rambling on with how great Anna was. And Elsa could only agree. Anna was great. She was amazing. She was perfect. The good sister.

"Calm down, Olaf," said Kristoff, smiling with a sheepish undertone. "Anna is great, yeah, but also naive, and childish and sometimes immature and loud, very loud. She is the person you don't want around when you have to sneak around a sleeping bear to steal his honey." He laughed, and Elsa looked at him. She only looked until he went on. "But all those little flaws make her even more perfect. Everyone has them. Flaws, I mean. I wouldn't want her any different." He looked to Sven who nodded in agreement, and Elsa still just looked at him in silence while Olaf still went on with his list of how great her sister was.

After she went back into her room to reflect the outcomes of her conversations of the day, she only could come to one conclusion. A painful true conclusion. Anna was the greatest person and best sister she would ever meet in her life, and she deserved more than a heartless older sister who pushed her away and hid behind a door. Elsa didn't deserve Anna at all and if she really wanted to give Anna a better world then she had to make sure there was no place for a heartless Snow Queen.

 _‘Funny,’_ Elsa thought, _‘if I don't have a heart, what is broken then?’_ Maybe it was her entire being that got lost along the way. Or she was already born like this. Or alternatively and more likely, parts of her were still waiting behind the door and got ripped out when she left her room, tearing her apart beyond repair. And finally, one thought made its way into her head. _‘Anna isn't the one who changed after those 13 years, it is me.’_

She sat down on her bed and looked at the ice which covered her walls, the ceiling, her interior furnishing, her belongings, and her heart. The little girl who had entered this room for so many years ago was still kept in here and someone else came out months ago. Elsa had no idea who it was, but she knew one thing very clear: She had to leave this room once more to go talk with her sister. Paying no attention to the cold mess in her room anymore, she stood up and slammed the door hard behind her when she went out to the hallway. Her sister's room was right next door. Same hallway. Same castle. Same kingdom. When Elsa walked down the hallway to the other door, however, it felt like a peregrination to another land. Now standing in front of the door, Elsa could feel the longing and yearning of young Anna while waiting for her older sister to open the door and pleading to the heartless Snow Queen to come out.

A bare hand hovered over the white wood. Her naked skin was so pale it almost looked as white as the color of Anna's door. One single knock. It echoed along the hallway, turning the deserted place into an eerie tunnel of no returning. And Elsa knew it was the truth. After this knock, there would be no coming back. She knocked again. Silence.

"Anna? It's me, Elsa. I know you are there. You probably don't want to see me right now, and I understand. Just listen, okay?" Elsa waited a moment to give Anna time to prepare herself. Not that Elsa, too, wasn't in need of a little time of preparation for the upcoming. With a long exhaling and a heavy chest, Elsa said, "Anna, I know I owe you an apology for earlier but, um… I am not here to say I'm sorry. I am sorry, but you deserve more than an apology. You always ask me to tell you what bothers me. You want me to share my thought with you. I am here to… to do exactly this now. I don't want to hide any part of me from you anymore. I am here to tell you what I am thinking."

 _‘What am I thinking right now? My head never has felt so empty before.’_ Elsa stood in front of the door and had no idea what to say. She looked down the hallway. The fading light of the dying day crept through it and vanished behind the windows, leaving the hallway alone with the moving light of the candles on the wall. She was alone here. Alone. Again. Between her sister and her was a door. _‘If I want to tell her everything then I should start from the beginning. All or nothing. Nothing goes here.’_

"Anna, I, um… When I was… Um, back then…" _‘Come on, Elsa. You can do this!’_ "When I was a little kid, I already knew I was… not like others. Different. An outcast who thought she stood alone. Hidden in my room from our parents, the staff and even you. I always thought I had no place to call my home. Where could a freak like me have a life and be happy anyway? Little me knew she was a monster that no one would ever love. Who could love a monster anyway? And how could I have known, hidden behind a door, how wrong I was? I was wrong, oh so, so wrong. Someone out there loved me all those years. After I finally came out of my room, I saw this one person who still loved me and I thought I found a dream that I could share. After so many lonely years, I hoped I finally found someone to share my dreams with. I was so lucky it almost wasn't fair to my younger self who was all alone."

Elsa paused. She needed a break. All those memories which were born in solitude haunted her again. All the concealed emotions from all these years came back and were boiling inside her body and making her dizzy now. But she had to go on. _‘Don't stop, Elsa. Anna needs to know. She needs to know.’_ And so, Elsa went on.

"But I was wrong, Anna. It wasn't unfair because I was wrong. I thought I knew my purpose now and where I belong. I thought I had found my home… with you. Anna, I thought I belong at your side. Me being the queen, with friends and my kingdom, but I was wrong. Everything I ever thought I knew was a lie. I told myself lies all along. Everything I counted on turned out to be untrue. I am not a queen. Not a good one, at least. I don't have friends. I scare everyone away. Everyone is just here with me because I can't go away. Could've guessed, should've known, but now I do, Anna. I do. Everything I've yearned for, everything I planned, all my sweetest memories and dreams were castles made of sand. I was building my castles in the sky, but now I see clear and it all starts crumbling. My lies to me, to you, to everyone. I can, finally, see beyond the lies and enter a world of truth. I am here and I understand, Anna. The little girl who dreamed and wished all those years ago, who hoped to find a home and a place to live and to love, she is not here anymore. She is still waiting in her room for something that will never happen. I left her behind, Anna. The sister you knew and the Elsa you got back are not the same. I am just an echo of a fading memory of this girl. A fake."

Elsa paused again, biting her lips and trying to ignore her watering eyes and the tears running down her face that made her mouth all wet. Her voice was shaking, dying along the way from her throat to her mouth. A faint, whispered "Anna" escaped her lips. "I need … I am … I don't know who I am anymore." _‘If none of it was really me then who am I supposed to be?’_ "Anna, I am lost and scared. I … I don't know what to do, Anna." Her voice didn't sound like her own anymore. It was a stranger's voice that filled the hallway on its search for a way through the door.

It scared Elsa even more.

"Anna, I think… I think I… have lost me while hiding myself. Every hope, every feeling, all love and trust and happiness I had, they're done, they're gone. I let them go. And what's left? Me … alone. Again. Anna, I am alone, I was alone all the time and I will be alone forever. I should've known it from the moment I stepped out of my room. But now I do. I know it now and it makes it easier to do the next right thing, Anna. I … I still love you. I love you so much and you deserve the world, Anna, because you are… you are everything. You are the hero of this little girl I forgot in my room. You are the good sister, a great person who is kind and brave and full of love. I love you so much and even your tiny flaws make me love you more. You are everything that little girl in the room wanted to be. But she never had the chance and I will never be like this. I am broken. Maybe I am a freak, a monster, even the heartless Snow Queen who pushes away everything and everyone she ever loved and doesn't deserve you at all. I have no idea who I am now but I know whoever stepped out of that room… I don't want her to be part of your life. You deserve better, Anna. Someone as broken and fake as me will only break your world, too, Anna."

While Elsa spoke, she slid down the door she had knocked on and ended up as a pitiful bundle on the floor, lying between her own tears that had dropped from her face and made everything wet like on a rainy day. Snowflakes were following the teary raindrops to the ground but Elsa didn't see any of them. She didn't feel the cold air around her. She felt nothing but the painful thumping in her heavy chest. One heartbeat, one stab.

"I don't belong in your perfect life, Anna," Elsa went on. She had no clue if her shaking voice was still to be heard under her tears and her dying whispers. "I guess my life meant nothing, it was all a sham. I am no queen, no sister, nothing. Not that girl and not Elsa. I guess I'm someone else now." _‘I wonder who I am…’_ Her voice was so shakily and her mind so clouded from the raging storm inside her, that she didn't know for sure if the last thought made it even out of her mouth or got lost along the way like everything else that was used to be Elsa.

She opened her mouth again to say the final sorry, but nothing came out. Her voice had died completely, keeping her from saying the most important words. _‘I am so sorry, Anna.’_ She wasn't done yet but her body couldn't go on anymore. She couldn't take it anymore. She broke completely and wept bitterly, drowning under her own pain. She barely noticed the moving sounds behind the door in front of her. She didn't hear the jingling of the doorknob and didn't see how the door swung open, revealing her crying sister. The only things she did notice were two warm, comforting arms that wrapped themselves around her trembling body and brought back a feeling into Elsa's heart that wasn't there for a whole week and what she had missed all those 13 years. Elsa couldn't name it in her state, but it made her cling closer into the embrace, nestling her head in her sister's crook of the neck and let her weep even harder.

This time, though, it was different. The embracing arms lessened the heavy pain in her eyes and chest and turned each tear into a beautiful release. A door opened. Not the one in front of her. She never dared to dig that deep underneath her skin, but she felt the open door in her chest now. It was such a beautiful release.

"Elsa," said a voice that barely made it through Elsa's crying sounds. But she heard it. She would always hear that voice. "You are a stinker." Elsa's world stopped turning, frozen in time like all the snowflakes in the hallway. No motion, no sounds, no hiding in the hallway. "How can you even think my world could be perfect without you in it? The only thing I ever wanted, the only thing I need in my world to make it perfect is my sister. It is you, Elsa, because, believe it or not, but I love you, too. You are my world, Elsa. I don't care if you are not the same little girl I saw disappearing behind a door all those years ago, because the sister I got back is just as good. You are no fake, no freak, no monster or anything else you call yourself. I wouldn't want you any different from who you are now. You are a great queen. The best big sister. I love the girl who stepped out of that room. And when you don't know who that is then I will help you find her. See her the way I do. If this is the only thing I can do, then I will. I found her once, and I will find her again and again until she can find herself, and we both can be fine together."

Anna's voice was soothing, calming, warm. The blizzard in Elsa vanished in a void but no autumn wind pushed it away this time. It was a warm summer breeze that filled both their hearts now.

"Thank you."

"For that?"

"For letting me in."


End file.
